'The breakup is focused on sensitive matters now considered national-security issues, including semiconductors, food and energy.
In China’s northeastern grain belt, farmers are getting a windfall from the government: more subsidies to grow soybeans, part of an estimated $1 trillion national effort to declare economic independence from the U.S.
More than 7,500 miles away, in Milwaukee, the industrial-parts manufacturer Husco is scrambling to use fewer Chinese-made components in its U.S. factories, as the Trump administration wields tariffs to reduce imports and try to resurrect American manufacturing.
“Some customers,” said Husco Chief Executive Austin Ramirez, “are demanding zero exposure to China.”
The forces underlying these two trends are driven by a reality settling in across Washington and Beijing. The two countries are starting to manage a messy divorce on the most sensitive issues of trade. Both view their economic competition as a matter of national security.
China’s leaders have determined that disentangling the two economies—often called “decoupling” or “derisking”—is inevitable. The shift fulfills a longstanding Chinese ambition to no longer be a junior partner to the West. It’s a break with decades of Beijing’s orthodoxy that China’s economic success depended on selling low-cost goods to American consumers and building its technological might with U.S. money and know-how.
Neither side wants to end all trade between the two economies. But fierce rivalry with the U.S. is now the primary driver of China’s economic strategy, and Xi Jinping is determined to come out on top.'
WSJ